Rebecca Coleman Rebecca Coleman Green Man icon Green Man icon
Mind The Gap
1 January 2017, 14:18

Last year I launched a new series of paintings at Reading Contemporary Art Fair. The title of this series is 'Mind the Gap', and the first of these was on display for a little less than an hour before it was snapped up and on its way to a new home!

As even the most cursory glance at my gallery will reveal, I get a great deal of artistic inspiration from the London Underground. There's just something about the architecture, style and atmosphere of this labyrinth of subterranean tunnels. I am constantly finding new and unusual perspectives here, offering unexpected delights.

An important part of what fascinates my about the Tube is the limitless potential to take a fresh look at common objects and scenes, finding new meanings. As a former London commuter myself, I know that these underground scenes can become so familiar as to be almost invisible. How many regular travellers, for example, really take note each time they step over one of the Underground's most iconic and ubiquitous warnings: to Mind the Gap?

In this series of works, I elevate these painted exhortations to be the focus of each piece. The words seem to have a magical ability - even within a single scene - to veer from deep philosophical meaning to mere abstract shapes, and back again.

Shorn of much of their context, these works can blur the distinction between realism and abstraction, and in so doing prompt new interpretations of these three simple words: Mind The Gap.